How many days in a year? Three hundred sixty five. How many worker salaries fit in one CEO's pay? Three hundred sixty four. Meaning that by the end of this day, there is a chance your CEO has made the equivalent of your yearly salary. He (less so she) is also making one of your year's salary on Saturdays and Sundays. Sweet!

Indeed, the CEO-to-worker pay gap is enormous. According to a new report by the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, the average CEO of a large U.S. company made roughly $10.8 million last year, 364 times that of the average U.S. full-time and part-time worker salary of $29,544. Looking only at full-time workers, including benefits, CEOs made only 270 times the average $40,000 pay. But don't you worry about them, this still doesn't include perks and pension benefits CEOs get. If it sounds excessive, that's because it is, especially if you consider that in 1989 CEOs earned 71 times the average worker pay.

An interesting anecdote from this IPS/UFE report shows that the pay of the 20 top U.S. CEOs was 204 times that of the 20 highest paid U.S. military generals, 38 times that of the 20 highest-paid non-profit leaders, and three times that of the top 20 CEOs of European companies with higher sales than their U.S counterparts.

But the average Joe can gloat. Those CEOs who make your yearly salary in a day probably also feel on the short end of the stick when their salaries are compared to private equity and hedge fund managers pay. These guys made an average of $657.5 million in 2006, about 61 times the average CEO pay and more than 16,000 times the average full-time worker pay.

Let's see, with 31,556,926 seconds in a year, these managers make your yearly salary each half hour (roughly) that passes in a day -- including sleep time!

Color me surprised. Along with the rest of the investing world, I was happily wandering around, lulled to contentness by the belief that the highest-paid CEO was the nice, boring Eugene Isenberg of Nabor Industries Ltd. (NYSE:NBR). And why wouldn't I believe it?

Well, mostly, because it's not true. IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ:IACI), you see, filed the proxy indicating its CEO's pay later than most companies. And the end result? IAC CEO Barry Diller blows poor Eugene out of the water. Eugene? $71.4 million (that's a lot Eugene! congrats!) Barry on the other hand:

$295. Million. Dollars.

What did Barry Diller do for this money (which was mostly stock options)? Well, during 2005, the year covered by the executive pay survey, his company spun off Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ:EXPE), the online travel site, which was -- I suppose -- a useful thing (although the spin-off's stock is down 30% this year). Stock in IACI declined during 2005, 7%, and while operating income improved by almost four times in 2005, it was still a quite-modest $868.2 million.

And, as this article points out: if you add in stock options from Expedia, Barry Diller pulled in $469.7 million.

I think we can slice and dice the numbers however we like, but none of us are ever going to believe that he's worth that much. The Home Shopping Network is a fascinating slice of Americana, a weird, wacky and wild-eyed universe in which Midwestern grandmas discuss their impending purchases of lawn ornaments and appliqued baby sweaters with highly made-up wannabe "Personalities." An unqualified Wall Street success it's not, and I, for one, vow never to buy anything from HSN again.

That doesn't mean I won't watch the scrapbooking marathon ...

Google continues to demonstrate its particular brand of goofy-yet-financially sound thinking, as the company indicated in a proxy filing yesterday. CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page will collect $1 in salary for 2006, just as they did for 2005. According to the filing, "Their primary compensation continues to come from returns on their ownership stakes in Google. As significant stockholders, their personal wealth is tied directly to sustained stock price appreciation and performance, which provides direct alignment with stockholder interests."

(On a multiples basis, however, they might have the highest bonuses anywhere; Brin was paid $1,723 in bonus, with Schmidt and Page collecting a tidy $1,630, over 1600 times their annual salaries!)

Google also announced that the company intends to forgo dividends to its shareholders "in the foreseeable future."